BitTorrent Inc just announced that it has acquired the popular BitTorrent client, uTorrent. uTorrent will continue to have its own website and community for now, and the uTorrent code base will remain closed source. Ludvig Strigeus, the writer of uTorrent will serve as a technical consultant, but BitTorrent Inc will do the majority of the development work.

uTorrent is an extremely lightweight, but feature-rich BitTorrent client. It was the winner of our BitTorrent client comparison, and voted the most popular BitTorrent client for Windows in our recent poll.

BitTorrent Inc (the company) on the other hand had a hard time building a large user base for their mainline client. By acquiring uTorrent they now have almost 50% of all BitTorrent users, which makes it easier to market their future products like the BitTorrent Video Store.

BitTorrent Inc founder and CEO Bram Cohen and uTorrent developer Ludvig Strigeus announced the deal at the uTorrent forum:

Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and uTorrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired uTorrent as it recognized the merits of uTorrent’s exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together uTorrent’s efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent’s expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.”

“It supports our goal for improving the user experience. The developer of uTorrent put a significant amount of time and know-how into optimizing the client for user experience and we think he did a great job,” added Bram Cohen in a response.

It is unknown how much BitTorrent paid to aquire uTorrent. Stay tuned for more.